THEY may have been overshadowed by the closely
fought parliamentary election, but last week's
local elections were also groundbreaking. Instead
of being elected via a first-past-the-post
system, Scotland's councillors were elected using
the single transferable vote (STV) method. Rather
than placing a single X against one candidate's
name, voters were invited to put the candidates
in order of preference - 1,2,3, etc. And, instead
of electing just one councillor per ward, three
or four candidates were chosen using a complexcounting system expected to produce a roughly proportional result.

This switch was expected to transform Scottish
local government. Labour benefited from
first-past-the-post elections - in 2003 it won 42
per cent of all the seats despite winning just 33
per cent of the vote - while the SNP lost out. If
STV had been in use in 2003, Labour would have
had around 100 fewer seats, the SNP about 120 more.

But the elections also matter beyond the confines
of Scottish local government. The STV system has
long been favoured by advocates of proportional
representation in Britain, but hitherto its use
has been confined to Northern Ireland. However,
if its use in last week's Scottish local
elections comes to be judged a success, it is
more likely to be put forward seriously for use
in other elections, including those for the
Holyrood and Westminster parliaments.

Scottish local government has certainly been
transformed. Labour lost more than 160
councillors. The SNP gained 180. The SNP gained
councillors in almost all of Scotland's 32
councils; Labour lost out in 22. Labour not only
lost heavily because of the switch to STV, but
also its support dropped more generally. Onaverage across the eight councils whose overall
results are detailed in our graphic, Labour's
support was down by nearly five points on 2003.

The party lost control of councils, too. Having
won control of 13 councils in 2003 - around half
of which it might still have won under STV -
Labour was left this time with just two, Glasgow
and North Lanarkshire. No other mainland council
now has one group in overall control.

How, though, does STV itself emerge from last
Thursday? Were voters able to cope with the new
method of voting? Just how proportional did it
prove to be? And did voters use the opportunity
provided by the new system to vote for individual
candidates they liked rather than just the party they preferred?

Voters had significantly less difficulty
completing the STV ballot paper than they did the
redesigned ballot paper for the Holyrood
election. In the latter, 4 per cent of the
constituency votes and a little under 3 per cent
of the regional votes were ruled invalid. The
final tally for the local elections looks to be
closer to 2 per cent. Among the eight councils we
have examined in detail, the highest incidence of
invalid votes was in Renfrewshire, at 2.5 per
cent, while in Edinburgh it was 1.2 per cent.
These figures are very much in line with the
equivalent figures for local elections in Northern Ireland.

Most voters also seem to have realised they could
cast more than one vote. Although voters appear
to have expressed more preferences the greater
the number of candidates on the ballot paper, the
detailed figures released by some councils
suggest the vast majority expressed at least two
preferences and where there was a reasonably
lengthy ballot then at least three was the norm.

But how proportional were the results? Our
graphic compares the proportion of
first-preference votes won by each party with
their share of the seats in eight councils. For
the most part the outcome in seats appears to
have been reasonably proportional, after bearing
in mind that wards of just three and four membersare too small to be perfectly proportional.
Larger parties tended to secure somewhat more
than their proportionate share, smaller parties
rather less, but they were not squeezed out entirely.

In East Ayrshire, East Lothian and Renfrewshire,
Labour won more first-preference votes than the
SNP, but only won the same number of seats.
However, STV is not just about first preferences.
Liberal Democrat candidates in particular often
did well in picking up second and lower
preferences, and in both East Lothian and
Renfrewshire this helped the party deny Labour a
vital seat. In contrast, the Conservatives oftenfailed to pick up many lower preferences from
other parties' supporters, ensuring they
sometimes lost out in tight races for the last seat.

But did voters vote for individuals, not just
parties? The popularity of individual candidates
certainly mattered. In wards where a party put up
more than one candidate, it was not uncommon for
one of those candidates to receive far more first
preferences than the others. For example, in
Garscadden in Glasgow the outgoing provost, Liz
Cameron, won more than 2,700 first preferences,
while the former council leader, Jean McFadden, secured just 1,100.

Equally, voters offered more than one candidate
from the same party did not feel compelled to
choose all the candidates of that party before
voting for a candidate of another party. In
Garscadden, only 42 per cent of Liz Cameron's
voters put Jean McFadden as their second
preference. And, while this was exceptional, itwas not uncommon for only around two-thirds to
three-quarters of a party's first-preferencevoters to stick to the party ticket.

On the other hand, 39 fewer Independent
councillors were elected. Most - 22 - were lost
in Highland, where the political parties used the
greater opportunity provided by STV to challenge
Independents. While they rarely displaced all of
them, at least one party candidate secured
election in all but one Highland ward. Outside
rural Scotland, however, Independent
councillors prospered - eight more were elected
in central-belt councils where party politics has its strongest grip.

That personal popularity matters under STV will
doubtless not be lost on Scotland's new
councillors as they consider how best to secure re-election in 2011.